Flipping to a new system
NFL’s OT rules need overhaul
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell answered 30 questions on 24 different topics at his annual Super Bowl address. Six questions centered on the non-call in the NFC title game, two on why Colin Kaepernick never landed another job in a league lacking quality backups.
Goodell didn’t have time to call on every raised hand, so he didn’t have to answer to the league’s ongoing failure to solve a simple problem: The NFL has tweaked its overtime rule through the years, but still can’t get it right.
If Matthew Slater, captain of special teams for the Patriots, had departed from his routine “heads” call for the overtime coin flip, the Chiefs would have been granted the first OT possession in the AFC title game. If Patrick Mahomes led his team to a quick touchdown, the Patriots would have been eliminated without Tom Brady taking a snap in overtime.
Around here, we never would have heard the end of it. Instead, crickets.
The more that different leagues try to get it right, the sillier the rules they write up.
In the AAF, each team has one shot at trying to score from the 10-yard line with one series of downs. Dumb.
In college, each team takes the ball at the opponents’ 25 and they go back and forth until there is a difference in the score. Starting with the third series, extra-point kicks are disallowed and replaced by mandatory twopoint conversions. Dumber.
The simple solution: Once the clock reaches zero, simply keep playing football under the rules of football until the score no longer is tied. Don’t invent any hokey rules or leave too much in the hands of luck with a coin flip.
If time expires and the score is tied, continue playing with the ball at the same spot on the field with the same down and distance and the same team in possession. If nobody has scored after 10 minutes of game clock, the declare the game a tie.
It’s amazing this wasn’t the first rule established. If it had been, every league would be using it and nobody ever would have sought to change it.
How would this have changed the outcome of the Patriots’ 37-31 elimination of the Chiefs? Not a bit, except that Brady would have run a play on first-and-10, instead of taking a knee on the final play of regulation. The Patriots would have driven for a touchdown on the Chiefs’ defense and the game would have ended, sending the Patriots to their fourth Super Bowl in five years.
Both teams had their chances in overtime in the NFC game as well, so it presumably wouldn’t have changed that outcome either. Not necessarily the case for the controversial non-call that has led to so much debate.
That play puts even more eyes on the AAF, which had its debut last weekend, specifically on the use of a Sky Judge. The ninth member of the officiating crew can overturn calls and even throw flags on non-calls. When reviewing calls from the booth, the Sky Judge is speaking in real time with all the viewers in on the conversation.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Mike Pereira, former vice president of officiating and a paid consultant to the AAF, gave an example of how the Sky Judge might come into play in a way that makes the game safer.
“If you get a helmet-to-helmet spear and it’s not called on the field, it can be picked up by the ninth official,” Pereira said. “He (or she) has the ability to do it in real time. It doesn’t go to replay. … He (or she) can call down to the field and say, ‘Hey, spearing on No. 33 of Birmingham, 15-yard penalty. Let’s go.’ “
The Sky Judge concept is worth tracking, as is the league’s decision to eliminate kickoffs and extra point kicks. The Sky Judge can rule on pass interference plays in the final five minutes of games.